Suddenly, he's a magic Beane

RAY RATTO

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, August 4, 1999

OAKLAND - Having just swallowed his first real swig of public approval for turning over 20 percent of the A's in less than a week, Billy Beane seemed slightly amused by the notion that he had also made his bones with his fellow general managers.

"No, by and large when a general manager calls another general manager, it gets returned within 24 hours," the Athletics' chief brainpan said before Tuesday night's ritualistic dope-slapping of the Baltimore Oh-No-rioles. "There's no less respect just because you might be working with a low payroll."

You'd like to believe him, of course, but you can't. In fact, you kind of suspect that even he doesn't believe himself, either. In one quick week of work, he became a bona fide, card-carrying, meeting-attending wheeler-dealer, and yes, the air is kind 12 of thin up there.

"Yeah, with some guys it's sometimes been sort of, "What are you doing at this dance?' Beane said. " "You're a junior. This is the senior prom.' "

And don't for a minute think Beane isn't acting every bit the senior these days. He has been inundated with notebooks and microphones asking him questions that essentially revolve around the central theme, "So tell us, just how brilliant are you?" For his part, Beane is very accommodating these days.

In fairness, though, he was pretty accommodating even before we discovered his magnificent cerebral cortex. It's just that until he lifted Omar Olivares, Kevin Appier, Greg McMichael, Jason Isringhausen and Randy Velarde from teams holding red-tag sales, he was Leo Gorcey pressing his dirty mug against the window of the restaurant. Oh, he made trades, but mostly to rid himself of salary or eye-rattling headaches. Being a seller isn't very gratifying, but it sure is easy.

Ahh, but buyers are big boys, and people see that, even if they are slow to lift their great and ever-widening hinders from the big blue chair in the rec room. Tuesday's crowd was a modest 10,878, which seems paltry until you remember that these games were drawing 6,000 two months ago.

The trick comes in understanding just how important these trades actually are, and for that you need to be to educated conjecture what Sammy Sosa is to smiling.

For one, we don't know that Weekend At Beanie's will actually propel the A's past Toronto and Boston and into the postseason. To find a less regarded postseason participant, you would have to go back to the '73 Mets, and before that the '69 Mets, the '61 Reds or even the '44 Browns. Why, if preseason regard had any merit at all, we wouldn't be discussing the A's at all.

Nevertheless, their 13-6 record since the All-Star break, the fourth-best in baseball, makes tentative believers of the flintiest curmudgeons. This team is funky enough offensively and remade enough on the pitcher's mound to make them a fairly short longshot. We'll know more when they enter Hell Week Times Two, starting Monday - three against the Yankees, three in Toronto, three in Boston, four against Toronto, then two against Cleveland.

If they can't get through that, well, even a good dream on Demerol is still a good dream. If they do, well, then we've got action.

For two, we don't know if this sudden interest in the larger-ticket items like Appier means that Beane will have more money to play with in November and December. Since we don't even know if Steve Schott and Ken Hofmann will still own the team, or whether Andy Dolich can cajole enough owners to approve his group's bid (24 times Appier's annual salary, plus change).

Even Beane couldn't see that far into the future.

"You'd have to be way into Oliver Stone movies to make any conclusions like that," he said, fingering a dog-eared and Pepsi-stained copy of the Warren Report. "You can't read anything into these trades like that."

Actually, that's not true. We could read anything we want into the trades. It's the proving-it part that gets dicey. With the sale moving at its glacial pace, Beane doesn't even know whom he might have to get approval from to renew Appier's $5 million option for next year. Maybe a seance with Connie Mack, Charlie Finley and Walter Haas might help.

Beane's closest source to the afterlife, though, is Sandy Alderson, who is busy these days throwing cold muriatic acid on the umpires' hopes of escape. Alderson naturally approved of Beane's frenzied initiative, but then again, Alderson is now free of the financial chains of Los Schottmanns, and can again see the good in spending rather than accepting money.

In other words, Beane is pretty much on his own right now, which is just fine with him in these days when he is being compared favorably to Branch Rickey, Stephen Hawking and Ben Stein. It is, after all, nice to be thought of as the king.&lt;